No Fight We Cannot Win
by waterbaby134
Summary: Five short tales of Jane and Lisbon each inspired by a Wicked song.


**So this is a story that I wrote for my good friend glindaloveshoes in honour of her birthday. It's a few short scenes of Jane and Lisbon, each inspired by a song from Wicked.**

**You don't have to have seen Wicked to get something out of this fic, and these are definitely NOT songfics.**

**They're not in chronological order, but it should be fairly easy to tell when each one is set.**

**They are canon up to 7x10, and there is no speculation about the final three episodes.**

**I hope you'll like it.**

* * *

_'I'm Not That Girl'_

She doesn't doubt that he loves her; she knows he does. He tells her all the time, sometimes with words and sometimes just in the things he does. He'd tell the whole world if she'd let him, might even hire skywriters to proclaim it to everyone in Texas. He's never been one for subtlety after all.

And the issue certainly isn't how she feels about him. She loves him more than anyone or anything on earth. He's been the centre of her entire being for so long now, she doesn't know quite how to get along without him. Shecoped, and she's proud of that, but she never really _lived_ while he was gone.

It's been proven time and again that they're stronger when they're together, and they're happier when they're together. It's just a shame that it took them so long to realize it, but they were always better at solving murders than unravelling the mysteries of their own feelings.

But now they have, and everything is wonderful, and there are still days when she wakes up and wonders why he chose her. He could have had anyone he wanted; he's so handsome and charming that women fall at his feet, but he's with her, and she's happier now than she can ever remember being. She sometimes feels like she's been waiting for him her whole life.

But it's not the same for him. She knows that before Red John and the CBI there was a time he used to be happy. When he had a wife, and a daughter, and a glittering career, and a mansion on the beach in Malibu. Before he ever knew she existed.

She's seen photographs of him in those years before she knew him (she Googled him one night a few days after they met.) Only a few years had passed since they'd been taken but she saw a completely different man in them. It wasn't just the tacky, shiny suits (though a particularly flamboyant silver one had made her snigger) but he'd looked so much freer. There was no hint of the worry lines that were now etched so deep in his brow they'd never disappear, and his smile reached his eyes like she had rarely seen it do in life. Yes, he'd been a trickster, but he'd been a happy man then, before Red John had taken it all away.

He's told her that he's happy now, but she fears he'll never be as happy with her as he was with Angela. He chose Angela too. Angela was his partner-in-crime, his support and his love, and she can't help feeling that she'll forever be attempting to fill her shoes, which she knows she simply can't do.

The fact that he's worn the ring for so long is proof enough. She's always hoped that he would take it off one day, and she still does, but so far he's shown no sign of removing it. Subconsciously, she's always interpreted it as him telling himself, and by extension her, that while it's OK for him to have two partners, and two loves, there can only ever be one wife.

Intellectually, she understands it, but there are so many times when she wishes he were wearing a ring she has put there, rather than Angela. It's probably selfish of her to even think about it, but it would be nice to look at the man she loves without having to be reminded every time that she was the second choice. He devoted his life to Angela, and the only thing that stopped him was that death had claimed her first.

If they'd met before the murders, she's sure that he would never have noticed her. Just a plain old cop; not particularly glamorous or sophisticated. Nothing special. If they'd happened to be in the same bar, his eyes would have slid right past her. He certainly wouldn't look at her the way he does now, like she's the most precious, beautiful thing he's ever seen.

He probably looked at Angela like that too.

She hates these thoughts, as they betray the person she always tries to be, strong and understanding, the friend he needed through all the Red John years. She wants to be a good person, who only sympathizes for him over the loss of his wife, instead of comparing herself to her and coming up wanting.

He can be a royal pain in the ass when he wants to be, and there can be days when she seriously considers killing him, but at the end of the day, she knows he is her soulmate, and she is his.

But Angela was too. And she got to be his wife.

One day she hopes she can be too.

Teresa Lisbon-Jane has a nice ring to it, she thinks.

* * *

_'What Is This Feeling?'_

She'd never known anything like it the first time he'd pulled a fast one on her. It was the first time she'd ever been pulled into a superior's office since she'd been promoted, and it finally made her realize exactly what she'd gotten into by signing on with him.

The man closed cases almost as fast they landed on her desk, and their percentage of successful arrests had almost tripled in the month that he'd been with them, but it had come at a heavy price.

Patrick Jane was antisocial; he was snide, disrespectful of authority and quite frankly, conducted himself in a manner bordering on sociopathy. More than once, she had questioned whether she'd made the right call in taking him on. Maybe she should have tried harder to keep him away from the Red John files, though knowing him; he would have just found some illegal way to do it.

She sat in the office of Virgil Minelli, trying not to cringe as he handed her ass to her on a platter. She'd always gotten on extremely well with her superior up until this point, and to see him looking at her with such disappointment and annoyance was a new and unpleasant experience.

"You need to pull him into line, Lisbon," Minelli snapped. "He has to realize that there are rules and regulations here."

"Oh believe me, it's not from a lack of understanding. He knows exactly what he's doing." She didn't want any excuses made for him on that score. Patrick Jane had a myriad of faults, but a lack of intelligence was not one of them. She'd seen enough these last few weeks to realize she'd barely seen the tip of the iceberg on that first case. The man was brilliant. Scarily so. And he knew it, which made it even scarier.

"Then do your job, Teresa," said her boss, flatly. "Get a handle on him before he pushes too far, because it'll be your ass on the line." She winced at his harsh tone, and his expression softened a little.

"You're a damn fine agent Teresa," he said. "Don't let this guy cost you your career."

She left Minelli's office, passing Jane on the way. He was nursing that stupid blue teacup he'd brought in and refused to part with, and chatting easily with one of the Fraud guys.

A wave of irritation washed over her. What right did he have to stand around looking so innocent when he'd nearly got them killed yesterday?

Looking at him now, nobody would have guessed that he'd spent the chief of the previous day goading two dangerous criminals into turning against one another. The ensuing argument had culminated in a gunfight. She and Cho had only just arrived in time to subdue the two men before things got really nasty.

She'd berated him all the way back to the CBI for his stupidity, and for not informing her where he was going. When she'd ranted herself into silence, he'd merely shrugged, uttered an insincere apology, and then refused to take the matter any further.

She was really beginning to hate this particular trait, of simply shutting down whenever things got heavier than he would like, along with that insufferable arrogance. Yes he was clever, but there was no need to make her feel like an idiot in order to prove it.

Patrick Jane was a difficult man to like. But whether they liked it or not, they were a team now, and they had to try and find some way to work together. For both of their sakes.

She called him into her office, and scowled at him. He had the gall to look surprised.

"Something the matter, Agent Lisbon?" he asked, pleasantly, all wide-eyed innocence.

In that moment, she loathed him. But she vowed to rise above it. She would not descend to his level just to score points in some personal battle of wills.

But then he smirked at her, and all bets were off.

* * *

_'Defying Gravity'_

She hopes he's happy, wherever he is in the world. Her thoughts often drift to him when she gets home from work, particularly when another of his letters finds it way to her.

She devours those letter again and again, as they're the only proof she has that what they shared was real for him like it was for her.

She wonders if he writes to anybody else, and a small of part of her hopes that she is the only one.

She misses him so much sometimes that she can almost justify taking time off work to try and track him down, just to make sure he's OK. Once they used to be the greatest team in the CBI, the two of them, and even though he drove her crazy, she loved being at his side.

They were once a double act, Jane-and-Lisbon, always spoken of in the same breath, and now she's on her own again. Before he came, she'd been on her own ever since she broke up with Greg, but she didn't realize how much she was missing out on. Now he's gone, her life feels just a little emptier, and her job doesn't hold quite the same interest for her that it used to. Things are a little slower in Cannon River, true enough, but she knows that the main reason is that she misses his presence.

She understands why he needed to leave; law enforcement was just a means to an end for him. He will probably live out his days in some dilapidated beach bungalow and be perfectly content, but she can't help but hope that one day something will entice him back home.

In his letters he sounds like he is finally at peace, and she's thankful for that. God knows, he has suffered enough in his life. If anyone deserves a stress free existence it's Patrick Jane, but she knows him better than anyone. He bores easily and needs to be constantly stimulated. Perhaps a life of leisure will grate on him after a while and he'll want to be back pitting himself against criminals again.

But she will just have to wait and see if the world brings him back to her side.

Until then, she has her memories and she has her letters.

She treasures every one.

* * *

_'No Good Deed'_

All he'd ever wanted was for her to be safe.

Red John was his fight and his fight alone. It was bad enough that he'd dragged her into a hunt that had spanned over a decade but he'd be damned if he let Red John use her as a weapon against him.

She was stubborn, so very stubborn. She swore up and down that she'd stand beside him until the end and he believed her. No matter how many times he tore her down, she kept getting back up for more.

Almost as long as he'd known her, he'd been trying to look out for her. He kept her out of his most diabolical plans in an attempt to keep her hands clean, and in the hope that she would still have a career to go back to once all this was over. But God she made things difficult for him. She construed his attempts to shield her as an act of betrayal and just kept pushing for answers, pushing to be included, took the hits for him instead of staying out of it like he wanted her to.

They'd had a lot of fights over it, over the years, but matter how many times he told her he'd done it to protect her, she simply refused to accept it, and got progressively angrier with him. No good deed went unpunished, after all.

"I'm a cop," was her constant refrain. "I don't need you to protect me, I can take of myself!"

He knew that, he'd always known that, but was it so hard for her to understand that she shouldn't have to? Most cops went through their entire careers without dealing with a killer as sadistic as Red John, and because of him, she was being thrown into his path every few months. It was only a matter of time before something happened to her, whether she was caught in the crossfire, or specifically targeted. Either way, he wouldn't be able to bear it if she came to any harm on his account. She was his best friend, sometimes his _only_ friend, and the idea of losing somebody else so dear to him was terrifying.

He knew he was a selfish man. He was willing to throw others into the line of fire in order to shield her, and he knew that he'd place a higher value on her life than anyone else's, including his own. Cops weren't supposed to think like that, he knew. No life was worth more than any other. But he wasn't a cop; he was a man desperately holding on to the only thing left worth living for.

He never wanted her to be the casualty of his standoff with a serial killer, not in any sense, and he never wanted her to have to fight to keep the job she loved. But his best intentions never seemed to work out that way. And she stuck with him through it all, fighting with him and arguing with him, but never once making him feel that she wasn't on his side.

If only he'd been able to return the favour. Instead, he'd made her doubt him nearly every step of the way, caused her pain, and made her cry. Smashed her heart to pieces a million times over, and all in the name of keeping her safe.

He kept telling himself he was doing the right thing, every time he saw the pain in her eyes that he had put there.

It would keep her alive, and her life was worth everything.

_She_ was everything.

* * *

_'As Long As You're Mine'_

She was supposed to be in DC with her fiancé, planning their wedding, and preparing for her new job. She was supposed to be forgetting about Patrick Jane.

Instead, she was here, lying beside him, with his arms wrapped around her, listening to the steady rhythm of his breathing.

He'd told her he loved her. In front of dozens of people on a commercial plane, he'd told her flat-out the one thing she'd been wanting to hear from him for so many years. She'd loved him so long, and so completely that she couldn't even remember the moment it started anymore.

It could have been the moment they met.

It could have been the day he saved her life.

It could have been the day they danced together for the first time.

Or it could have been just any day, the kind where nothing particularly noteworthy had happened at all, just the two of them hanging out in the office, bickering and joking like they'd always done.

She'd never felt this way about anybody, not even Greg or Marcus, both of whom she had agreed to marry. Granted, her acceptance of Marcus was at least partly influenced by her anger with Jane, but she'd meant it when she'd told him yes. He'd been kind to her and treated her well and maybe that should be good enough for her, and it was time to accept that fairytale romances were for the storybooks.

Apparently, nobody had given Jane the memo. He'd always had one hell of a sense of timing.

She felt his fingers begin to lazily pull through her hair, gently brushing against her scalp, and teasing out the knots. It was becoming one of his favourite pastimes these days, and she smiled to remember how she used to fantasize about burying her hands in his golden curls in the CBI days.

"What are you thinking?" he asked her, softly.

"I'm wondering how we got here," she said. "Did you ever think this would happen between us?"

He chuckled. "Not for a moment. But there was a part of me that always really hoped it would."

"Really?" She'd always thought she'd been alone in being in love up until that fateful trip to DC. He'd certainly never given any indication that there was anything more than friendship between them, and he'd hadn't seemed all that cut up about her relationship with Pike, at least at the beginning.

He drew her into him and kissed her. "It killed me to see you with him," he said. "And I hated that he was the one that was making you happy."

"You could have said something."

"Would you have believed me?"

"Maybe not." Her hand found his and laced their fingers together. She'd always thought he had beautiful hands, and beautiful eyes, and a beautiful smile. God, she was turning into a sap. Next, she'd be composing epic poetry, or picking petals off a daisy chanting, 'he loves me, he loves me not.'

"If I'd woken up to myself sooner, we could have been here months ago," he said.

"You weren't ready then."

"Were you?"

She sighed. "I've been waiting for you for years. You know that."

He squeezed her hand. "I'm sorry you had to wait so long."

She rolled over to face him, and brought their lips together in a gentle kiss, still a little thrilled that this was something she was now allowed to do.

"It's OK," she whispered. "I always knew you'd be worth it."

* * *

**As always, I hope you enjoyed.**

**I'm eagerly awaiting the final few episodes. I can't wait to see how it all ends.**


End file.
